Caterpillar

Ink is raining again.

Stan, on the radio, rapping tattoos
onto white-trash girls,
sitting, spinning on bar stools.

The highway is moving ninety miles
back, to late August madness,
cars are splashing

into phone booths
left over from big cities
and light houses.

But ships don’t come in
like they used to.
The calm of the sea

isn’t the color of God’s
angry finger anymore.

Caterpillar!!

Across the back of my shoulder!
“To rob.” “To pillage.”
“To suck the ink out of every living thing.”

My name is not what matters.
The alphabet is random.
My fingers have no pattern.

I’m bound to and wrapped around each syllable
like a piece of cabbage.
An appetizer. A long, soft caterpillar
eating my way into you.

Never Surrender

Her name is inked across my wrists, so that
when I want to slit them, I don’t. It serves as a reminder,
it serves me well.
It protects me from myself.

Everyone has them, those moments when
life holds you by your throat. You wish it
would choke you,
but it won’t.

So, you dangle in the air, solid ground
swiped from under your feet. You grip on to that
tight embrace around your neck, holding the hands of the suffocator,
trying to pull him off. You search for air,
gasp for breathe, struggle and try to survive. Each time you think that
life has beaten you, it releases it’s grip enough for the oxygen to
sink inside your lungs and tease you with
relief.

Eventually, you want to let go. Let the struggle continue
without you….and sometimes you reach a point that you try.
When that point comes around
for me and I want to let my blood drain free
I see your name
and I am reminded.
I have reasons to keep fighting.